


SiCk

by RedPen



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, sober!Gamzee
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-04-21
Updated: 2011-08-07
Packaged: 2017-10-18 11:22:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/188399
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedPen/pseuds/RedPen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>He wasn't himself, he was broken and they fixed him.  It's okay Gamzee.  It's all okay now.  You were sick.</i></p><p>Putting Gamzee back on the slime and pretending nothing happened doesn't make the problem go away.  It just covers it up for a little while, and sooner or later, something's going to give.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> What if Kanaya's kick had incapacitated Gamzee long enough for the others to shove some sopor into him? And what if just shoving sopor at the problem didn't fix anything?

Sleeping used to be blood and death and troubled dreams, killing, culling, marching to battle in a column of cannonfodder ready to die, beneath alien skies of a hundred different colors and all the color of blood.

Sleeping used to be a golden city, the joyous screaming of the wind and the world rushing upward around him, plummeting like rain towards the roiling sea, catching himself with a laugh on nothing more than air, just before the shining cobblestones dash him to ripples. Tavros is a wingless bird on the currents far above him, shouting down, "I, uh, I knew you didn't forget how to fly! Come on Gamzee, that stopped being funny the, uh, eighth time you did it!" But it didn't, because they're both laughing, and they drift below the clouds and watch the future paint itself in pastels.

Sleeping used to be terrifying and beautiful and alive. But this time it's dark and empty, and he can neither dream nor wake. He lies in the darkness behind his own eyes, his face stinging, his whole body aching from the fall he couldn't stop, and there's a numb throb in the back of his head, trapped behind a layer of fog where he can't quite feel it. His mouth tastes sickly sweet.

Sometimes he can feel himself coming out of it, sliding back into his own body like a discarded shirt and rising up out of the fog, but then he's gripped by hands, constricting arms, shadowy figures his slitted eyes can't make sense of. They hold him down. Ignore his weak struggles as they pry his teeth open and force the sickly sweet something down his throat, and he coughs and chokes and sinks back into the darkness.

\- - - - - - - - - -

For a while he sleeps. He heals.

And then he wakes up.

\- - - - - - - - - -

For a brief, pleasant minute, he thinks he's home. Lying in darkness, the enveloping sludge of his recuperacoon warm against his skin... Until he strains his ears to hear an ocean that isn't there, and remembers that it never will be.

He opens his eyes and stares up blankly at the brushed metal ceiling. He's in his room in the veil, lying fully clothed in the thin layer of sludge coating the bottom of an industrial steel tub, a dull headache pounding at the back of his skull. "Mother fuck," he rasps, and puts a hand to his temple, runs a finger down one of the still-stinging scratches going from forehead to jaw.

"Yeah, I know." A silhouette leans over the edge of the makeshift recuperacoon, and Gamzee registers gaunt cheeks, a strained attempt at a poker face, two nubby little horns sticking up out of uncombed hair. "Hey," says Karkat.

"Hey," says Gamzee. He rubs his head again, feeling skin slick with sweat under his fingers and realizing that someone has carefully washed away his greasepaint. Some part of him thinks that he should be upset about this, but all he can be right now is fog, because that's all that's in his head. Fog and headache and sickly sweetness and fog.

"You, uh... You've been out of it for a couple of days. You had a pretty bad fall," Karkat offers. The mutantblood looks stretched somehow, haggard, like he's been thinking too much and feeling too much and he just about can't do it anymore. He watches with some apprehension as Gamzee continues to bemusedly feel out the thin indigo scabs crossing his face.

"Huh. Sure up and feels like I had a pretty bad motherfucking fall."

"How much do you remember?" Karkat asks the question like he expects the words to turn around and stab him.

"I dunno, brother, my head's all..." He gestures vaguely with the hand not pressed to his face. "But I think I..." It's hard to think, hard even to talk coherently with that fog swirling around in his head, but he latches on to the fleeting lucidity that comes with every throb of dull pain in the back of his skull, and clings. "I think I remember..."

 _Tavros's hot brown blood streaking his hands, the urge to kill rising up in him like an electrical current he couldn't break, Equius's mouth gaping, making ragged, desperate noises as he struggled for the air that never came, the delicate snap of Nepeta's wrist breaking, the impact of his club striking her skull again and again and again..._

"Oh fuck," says Karkat, and he thinks maybe he's shaking, and his nails are digging into his face and cracking the scabs open. "Dammit, no, it's okay Gamzee, no, it's okay, it's okay, fuck, hold on."

Karkat's arm is behind his shoulders, helping him sit up, forcing him upright, and the slime beneath him squelches stickily as his back leaves it. "Here, drink this. Take it, fuckass, goddammit!"

Something cool and smooth is pressed into his hand, a glass of liquid, and he rather dazedly allows Karkat to guide it to his lips. "Drink," Karkat commands, ( _don't drink DONT YOU DARE DRINK_ ) and he drinks, and it's thick and sickly sweet and familiar, and then the fog rolls across his mind again and he's not shaking anymore. The distant beat of his headache fades away.

"Okay," the other troll breathes, after a minute, sounding like he's just run a mile for all the exhaustion and relief in his voice. "Okay, alright. You okay? No... urges to slaughter us all or anything?"

Gamzee doesn't have to ask what he means. "Sopor slime," he states at last, thickly, his mouth still sweet and sticky. Karkat's arm tightens a bit around his shoulders.

"Yeah. Sopor slime. We got you your fucking sopor slime. Turned you back to normal. It's okay now."

"Okay," he echoes, his own voice sounding muffled in his ears. He can still feel the blood burning hot against his hands, but he looks down at them and they're covered in translucent green slime. In a life made up of colors and shadows and swirling mists, those few sopor-free hours stand out with almost painful sharpness.

"Tavros is...?" He couldn't care less about Equius and Nepeta, not with the memory of that peanut-butter brown still so vivid. He's not sure why he's asking. His head was clear, then. He _knows_.

"Yeah," Karkat says reluctantly. "It wasn't you. He got into a fight with Vriska, it just... happened."

"But Equius and Nepeta. That was me."

"...Yeah."

"Sorry," he says, because he feels vaguely like this is expected of him. His eyes are starting to feel heavy and all he wants to do is lie back down and lose himself in the fog for a while.

"Don't even start," Karkat grumbles, scowling at him. "You don't get to be sorry, you don't get to feel bad about about this fucking mess you caused. That was past-me's fuckup for not noticing you were about to flip out and start killing everything in sight. God, he was an asshole."

"Haha."

"Oh there we go. You're laughing obnoxiously at unfunny shit. Welcome back, Gamzee."

"Never up and went anywhere," he murmurs.

Karkat seems to realize Gamzee's going dead weight against his supporting arm, because he helps him lie back down in the tub again and almost reluctantly draws away. There's a voice far, far away in his head screaming, _no, NOT THIS AGAIN, i was lucid for once in my motherfuckin life, I KNEW WHO I MOTHERFUCKING WAS, don't do this brother, WAKE UP, please wake up_ , but the sopor is doing its work and he can't quite hear it over all the colors.

Karkat sits back, and Gamzee loses sight of him over the edge of the tub. "Just... just go back to sleep. I'm gonna wake you up in another hour or two to give you some more sopor. Okay?"

Gamzee murmurs something incoherent that might or might not have been "okay, motherfucker," and he closes his eyes and lets the sopor seep into him.

He sleeps and doesn't dream.

\- - - - - - - - - -

The first time he enters the main room again, everything is darker. Quieter. Wrong. The transportilizer in the main room of the lab pulls him together out of color and light, and Karkat is right behind him, hand reaching out to seize his arm and hold him steady ( _hold him back, KEEP HIM FROM RUNNING_ ). At the silent whoosh of the machine, they all turn to look: only four pairs of eyes, like sparse stars against empty air and abandoned computers.

"Hey motherfuckers," Gamzee murmurs, feeling his face go hot and wishing, suddenly, that they weren't staring at him with gazes that threatened to melt him away, wishing that he had that thin layer of makeup between himself and the rest of the world. His eyes dart to Tavros's computer for a second before he remembers that Tavros won't be there, Tavros is a broken body and a brown smear on the walls.

It's Kanaya, of all people, who speaks first.

"Hello, Gamzee," she says quietly, and she stands up and walks over and- (he winces for a second, draws back) _hugs_ him, carefully, the kind of perfectly ashen hug that wraps around him and shields him from the rest of the world. He's enveloped in her sunlight, and after a shocked moment, he hugs her back.

"Sorry, sister," he speaks into her hair, his voice breaking, and she answers, understandingly, "I know you are. You made a mistake. You weren't yourself, and you're back now, and everything is alright."

It's not alright, because there are peanut-butter brown handprints swooping wildly across the brushed-metal walls of the lab, but he can't say that because in his sopor-addled head he's terrified that if he reminds them they'll drive him away. He just stands there with Karkat's hand resting gently on his upper arm and his face buried in Kanaya's hair, and his breath starts hitching in his throat, and whatever hate they all have for him is lost, drowned in indigo tears.

He spaces out almost as a defense mechanism after that, letting himself slide into the safe warm fog at the back of his head. Vaguely he recalls the others talking to him, telling him it's okay, he wasn't himself, he was broken and they fixed him. It's okay Gamzee. It's all okay now. You were sick.

At some point he winds up sitting at his old computer and staring in rapt attention at his screensaver while somebody (Kanaya, he thinks) gently rubs his back. Some part of him wonders why no one was this nice to him before he went on his killing spree, but by that time they're giving him more sopor and he stops being able to care.

\- - - - - - - - - -

And the status quo returns. He sleeps and doesn't dream.

\- - - - - - - - - -

They are the seven survivors of a dead race. He's been told that Aradia is alive, somewhere out in the far reaches of paradox space, buying them time and keeping the demon away, but she isn't part of the world anymore, out of sight out of mind, and the other six of them go on living almost mechanically in their steel prison.

Karkat is the worst of them: everything he does now is with a kind of quiet, manic intensity, talking to the humans, making plans, starting memos and abandoning them, always at his computer, except for the hour or so every day that he disappears into his own dark section of the lab, and returns reeking of paradox slime. It's where the sopor comes from, Gamzee's told. Organic enough to be paradox cloned from the pies of their past, over and over again until there's enough to fill the metal carapace-cloning vats that serve as their makeshift recuperacoons.

"You can stop," Terezi tells him at one point, when he rises restlessly to return to his room yet again. "My god, Karkat, we have enough."

He doesn't answer, never answers, only brushes past her and transportilizes out of the room, and coming from Karkat the silence is oddly disturbing. Terezi shrugs and goes back to her computer, where she and Sollux are absorbing the scriptures of irony scrawled across her screen in blossoming red text, taking in the way they smell and taste and sound and feel, and conquering their collective blindness with Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff.

Gamzee doesn't see much of Vriska. She stays holed up in her room, talking to the John human, and while Karkat insists that the rest of them stay in one place, he lets her wander where she sees fit. Maybe he doesn't have the energy to stop her anymore. Kanaya always makes a point of knowing what she's up to. Kanaya is... still Kanaya, but with sharper edges. As kind and motherly as she is fierce and terrifying, knowing exactly when to be one or the other, balancing them in a perfect gradient.

He catches himself staring at her a lot. It's hard not to, the way her skin radiates light, like there's a sun inside her and she's made of frosted glass. Nobody's told him why she looks the way she does, and his train of thought always seems to get derailed by the time it occurs to him to ask her. She's always gentle with him now, almost eerily so, as if by kindness she's trying to make up for some past cruelty. ( _she kicked you in the bulge, motherfucker, MOTHERFUCKING KICKED YOU INTO THE MOTHERFUCKING ABYSS, and you're still there in the dark, brother, WAKE UP._ )

It takes him a while to realize that she and Karkat have worked out an unspoken schedule with him. One or the other is always around to keep an eye on him, exchange a few casual lines of conversation, make sure he's okay. Whenever the distant throb in the back of his head gets particularly painful, Karkat or Kanaya is there with a glass of sopor slime, as if they know. (They do, he finds out later. They've got the dosage meticulously timed.)

He sometimes wonders what would happen if he simply didn't drink it, like the him behind the fog keeps insisting, but they watch him until the glass is empty, and it makes the headache go away for a while, so he supposes it doesn't matter.

\- - - - - - - - - -

There's a tension in the air between Karkat's computer and the dynamic duo that is Sollux and Terezi. The three of them don't look at each other, don't talk to each other, but it's in a very obvious way that announces to everyone in the room that they aren't looking and aren't talking. Sollux and Terezi giggle together at something on their screen, and Karkat's shoulders go stiff.

He's pretty sure Terezi's to blame. Terezi, always mocking, always laughing, licking her screen because she _knows_ it annoys him, flirting with that bright red text. Gamzee doesn't know what Karkat and the blue text talk about, but they sure don't seem to be exchanging little hearts like Terezi and Dave.

\- - - - - - - - - -

On his way back from the load gaper, once, he catches sight of two figures in an empty hallway. Karkat slouching tiredly against the wall with the collar of his shirt pulled down over his shoulder, baring the curve of his neck, Kanaya wiping something richly red from her lips with a dainty hand.

Gamzee pulls back behind a bend in the hallway, seized once again by that newfound desire not to be looked at, and not wanting to interrupt.

"You should sleep," he hears her tell Karkat. "We have recuperacoons now, you won't have... those dreams."

"Fuck no, I've told you a hundred times and I'm starting to think you're deaf. The moment I stop keeping track of you people you go all feral on me."

She laughs softly at that, and states calmly, "Karkat, you don't think I could manage our friends long enough for you to take a nap?"

"Are you kidding me? You're one of the ones I'm worried about. Who knows what your fucking rainbow drinker murder urges will have you doing by the time I get back."

"My present condition does not quite function that way."

"Tell that to Eridan."

"Karkat," she repeats, her voice going steely, "If you do not go and take a nap right this instant, I will not hesitate to incapacitate you, carry you to your recuperacoon, and hold you down until you fall asleep."

"You wouldn't."

"I am capable and willing."

Karkat glares at her for a minute before muttering, "Just stay out of my room." He stalks off towards his section of the lab, grumbling incoherently, and Kanaya heads back toward the transportilizer to the main room with a small but triumphant smile. She catches sight of Gamzee staring at her as she rounds the corner, and pauses for a moment.

"Where are you going?"

"Oh. Uh..." It's hard to think when he keeps getting distracted by her glowing skin (how does that even work?) but he shakes his head to dislodge the stray thought and tries to remember what he was doing a minute ago. "Oh yeah. Coming back from the motherfuckin load gaper, you know? Guess I got distracted."

"Well, try to make it back to the lab," she instructs him, in that careful accent of hers that gives equal emphasis to every perfectly pronounced word. "I do not think Karkat would appreciate it if everyone started wandering off on my watch."

She's pale for Karkat, Gamzee realizes. And Karkat is pale for her. He watches the content look on her beautifully glowing face, and his hands are hot with blood and he's never going to have that again, and something diamond-shaped in his chest twists painfully.

"Haha, you got it, motherfucker," he manages, smiling a smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes, while somewhere in the back of his head the beat starts up and he tries his hardest not to want to punch her. "Right behind you, just lead the motherfuckin way."

But when she steps onto the transportilizer and vanishes, he doesn't follow. Instead he makes his way to Karkat's room, taking the transportilizer marked with the Cancer symbol and proceeding down Karkat's narrow branch of hallways until he reaches a door sealed by a computer terminal. He doesn't know the passcode, but he hammers on the door for a while anyway, and doesn't get an answer. Karkat has long since fallen asleep.

He's not sure what he would have said if the door had opened, anyway.

When he at last returns to the lab he gets a disapproving look from Kanaya, but he just grins at her and cites "motherfucking miracles, sister," as his latest delay.

The next time she brings him sopor he "accidentally" drops it and gets slime and glass fragments all over both their feet. By the time she fetches him another glass of it his head is pounding and his thoughts are getting frighteningly sharp, but he doesn't care. He hopes it stains her shoes.

\- - - - - - - - - -

He trolls Tavros to ask for advice, and it's an hour before he realizes no one's going to answer.

\- - - - - - - - - -

The inevitable result of such a carefully planned dosage of sopor is that his body starts knowing what to expect, and building up a resistance to it. It's not enough, never enough. The headache goes away for a while and keeps coming back, and while everyone is sympathetic they don't give him more, because there's a fine line between keeping him medicated and supporting his addictions. They wake him from claustrophobic black psudo-dreams twice a sleep cycle, and force him to drink the stuff before he's allowed to go back to sleep.

He starts to resent it, and that too is inevitable. He sleeps and doesn't dream.

\- - - - - - - - - -

Sollux and Terezi are laughing at something again, and Karkat is staring at the pesterchum window on his screen with his hands clenched so tightly that Gamzee half expects his fingernails to draw that disgusting mutant red blood. There's a heaviness to the air, like the stifling humidity before a storm. Kanaya, seated at her own computer, keeps casting glances Karkat's way, perched on the edge of her chair as if she can't decide whether or not she wants to stand up, and Gamzee suddenly decides he can't take that. Can't watch her walk over and talk to Karkat and diffuse him, because if he has to watch the two of them paleflirt one more time he's going to punch something.

Another bout of laughter from across the room, and Karkat at last gives up all pretense of reading the blue text on his screen and turns his head and opens his mouth to shout at them. Kanaya starts to rise, and something in Gamzee's head says _NO._

Gamzee practically launches himself out of his chair. "Hey best friend!"

He lopes over with a grin and leans his hands on the back of Karkat's seat, effectively placing himself between Karkat and whatever private joke Terezi, Dave, and Sollux are sharing.

"What," Karkat hisses, his stiffness loosening a bit as Gamzee's torso plants itself firmly between him and the rest of the room.

"Uh." Now he can't think of anything to say. "I forget. I was gonna ask you... uh..."

Kanaya's eyes are burning themselves into his back, and his face is going hot and indigo again, and now Karkat is staring at him too, and he wonders if everyone stared at him so much before the veil or if this is new, their burning gazes and their stupid eyes. _makeup, brother. YOUR FACE IS NAKED. put your motherfucking face on and it won't be you they're staring at._

"Oh yeah. Where'd you up and put my face?" he asks Karkat.

"Your what?"

"My face." He makes a sweeping circular motion around his face with one hand, the unmarked gray skin and the healing cuts that he all too often forgets. "You went and emptied my miracle modus when I was out of it, I can't find my motherfuckin facepaint. Nakedness is a sin, brother."

Karkat rolls his eyes and fiddles with his own sylladex before producing a worn purple compact of greasepaint. Gamzee snatches it up with a grin. "Thanks, best friend!"

"Is that all you wanted? I'm talking to John and it's pretty fucking important. Planning for our future and all. Unlike some people who just talk to coolkids for the hell of it." He raises his voice for the last bit, and Terezi playfully sticks her tongue out at him from across the room.

Distract him, defuse it, don't leave it for Kanaya to fix. "You got my stardust?" Gamzee asks flippantly, drawing Karkat's attention away again.

"You had about a hundred packets of that stuff; I don't know what happened to it. Somebody probably threw it out."

Gamzee makes a face and leans lankily over Karkat's shoulder to absentmindedly skim his conversation with John. "Come on, bro, why'd you have to throw out my shit? I mean sure it was shit but it was MY shit, you know? Ain't chill to mess with some other brother's shit."

"Did you even have a fucking clue what was in your modus? It was a mess. We found an imp in there, Gamzee. An honest-to-god IMP."

"Aw yeah, that was Polonius."

"You _named_ it?"

"Nah, Tav named it, motherfucker, it was one of his. What did you up and do with it, anyway?"

Karkat goes oddly silent at that, and Gamzee gets a sinking sensation in the pit of his stomach as he remembers how everyone but him and Tavros dealt with imps. "Oh don't tell me you killed Polonius, brother, he was chill!"

"No we didn't kill Polonius, we... set him free in a field of daffodils or something. Why don't you go do something else, I told you I'm busy."

Karkat's muscles have loosened up a considerable amount by now, and Sollux and Terezi aren't laughing so loudly. And Gamzee, off his guard now and figuring he might as well get the rest of his sylladex back while he's at it, makes the mistake of asking, "You got my clubs, motherfucker?"

He knows it was a stupid thing to say even before Karkat rounds on him with a furious scowl.

"No I do not have your clubs, and I sure as fuck am not telling you who does. You're not getting them back and you KNOW why."

"Oh. Yeah." Gamzee tries to crack a smile before Karkat catches the hurt look on his face, and quickly turns away. "I'm gonna go ask around for my stardust, I'm sure somebody knows where it all ended up. I won't bother you no more, bro."

He wanders off before Karkat can say anything more.

In a solitary corner of the room he starts carefully applying his makeup. (What does Karkat think he'll do with a weapon in his hands? He's not the one plotting bloody vengeance against Sollux and Terezi.) The thick paint stings his cuts, but he grimaces and pretends it's Karkat's pain and thinks _this is for stealing my shit, best friend. I HOPE IT MOTHERFUCKING HURTS._

\- - - - - - - - - -

Later he walks the most well-traveled hallways of the lab, and he digs through the refuse bins and finds most of his stardust, carefully sealed in plastic packets. Alone in the corridor he sits cross-legged and tears one open, tosses it into the air and watches it sparkle, and says a prayer or two for himself and for Tavros's soul.

 _now brother, you know that ain't the deal,_ says the him behind the fog, and he winces because that means the headache is about to come back. _WE DON'T DO MIRACLES NO MORE, YOU KNOW THAT. you want them you gotta make them yourself._

He doesn't know how, and he tells himself as much.

 _BULLSHIT. you're the mirthful messiahs, motherfucker. BOTH OF THEM. you want to see his soul off right you go and find him. YOU'RE A GOD. you know the motherfuckin way._

But he doesn't. With a clear head, he is the divine wrath of a vengeful god, the prophesied deliverer, the vessel of holy words and deeds. On sopor slime, there are too many colors between him and heaven.

 _DON'T PRAY TO US NO MORE,_ they tell him. _you are us. IT'S STUPID._

\- - - - - - - - - -

He throws the stardust away in the bin where he found it.

He sleeps and doesn't dream.

\- - - - - - - - - -

The lab is asleep, and he wakes from nothingness to the throb of another developing headache. It's an hour before anyone is scheduled to bring him more sopor slime. For the briefest of seconds he considers shoveling a handful of the stuff that lines his makeshift recuperacoon into his mouth to take the edge off the pain, but the thought of eating it raw makes him gag. _motherfuckin UNSANITARY._

In the darkness he pulls himself out of the sludge of the industrial tub and lies down on the floor next to it, pressing his forehead to the cold metal ground. His eyelids droop and he lets them, knowing it's stupid, knowing that if he falls asleep now he'll dream dark and carnal dreams of blood and death and war drums until someone comes to bring him sopor and shakes him awake. And not caring, because the floor is cool and it feels nice.

He closes his eyes, just for a minute; he's sure the headache won't let him doze off...

He sleeps and dreams.

\- - - - - - - - - -

Gamzee dreams an ocean.

Mirror still and unbroken, flat as a sheet and stretching forever in every direction, perfectly reflecting the bottomless, deep violet sky.

He opens his eyes and watches it sail by, a saline wind teasing his hair and the beautifully familiar taste of sea salt on his tongue as he listens to the the water lap beneath him. He's lying atop something soft and white that smells like _home_ , and a deep voice rumbles in his ears.

 _I wondered when you would find your way here, Little Goat._

Gamzee's throat goes tight. His hands close around the downy white fur beneath them and he doesn't want to ever let go again. He knows it's just a dream and he wants to pretend it's real. The Old Goat's voice is laughing, rich and warm and realer even than when he was a sprite. _Don't cry, Little Goat, I'm here._

"No you're not. Just a motherfuckin dream." And he cries anyway. Sobs into his guardian's back as he swims along, and the Old Goat murmurs consolingly, _I know, I know, I always leave, always stay away. I did wrong by that boy. I did wrong by my Little Goat._

"You're not here. You died on me," Gamzee manages, his voice muffled by his lusus's fur. "Died on me twice, up and left me like you always do, like you always motherfuckin do."

 _I did wrong by you, Gamzee. I did wrong._

"I hate you. I hate you so much."

 _I know. 'Bout time you learned how to do that._ He's still laughing, deeply, lovingly. He can take hate, he is a deep well into which Gamzee weeps, and nothing hurts him, only mingles with whatever pure thing lies within.

"You always left," Gamzee chokes out. "I thought... when you were a sprite... But you never motherfuckin stayed. Hate you so much. Hate you hate you hate you hate you hate you hate you..."

 _Good,_ the Old Goat answers. _I'll take it. I deserve it. Hate me as much as you can, Little Goat, I was worried you had no hate in you. Worried I'd broken you somehow, when they told me what you were meant to be._

"You were fucking scared of me," he sobs.

 _Not of you, little one, never of you. But you were so important, descended from someone so great, destined to grow into someone so great. I was afraid I couldn't do it. Afraid I'd ruin you if I was there. I did wrong by that boy, not a night goes by that I don't tell myself I did wrong by that boy._

"That's stupid. That's all kinds of stupid. I ain't nobody, didn't grow into nobody... couldn't even be a god the right way... I don't know how, they won't let me..."

 _Who are you, Gamzee?_ his lusus asks gently.

"I dunno, Old Goat, I don't even fucking know no more..."

 _Yes you do._

"Messiahs," he murmurs, pressing his face into deep white fur and letting it clear his eyes of indigo. "Both of them."

 _Because?_

"There ain't nobody else for them to up and be. I gotta be them both or they ain't never gonna be nobody, and all we been praying to for generations is just... motherfuckin empty air. Gotta give those prayers somewhere to go. Gotta make them matter. I'm the last one left, the only one who can."

 _It's alright, Little Goat. You saved their prayers. You gave them their gods._ His large, shaggy head turns around at last, and Gamzee raises his face out of the blanket of fur just enough to make out milky white eyes, shining and opalescent and empty, windows to some brighter light in another place. _I did wrong by you, and you still gave them their gods. I'm proud of you. I've always been so proud._

"I killed two people. I was just so motherfuckin mad at Equius, all the shit he always said to me." He rolls over onto his back and stares up at the sky, dark and void of moons or stars, deepening his voice to imitate Equius. "Have I ever told you what a reprehensible disgrace you are? What you do appear to know is e%actly how to ma%imize my livid contempt for you. I just hate you so much." Gamzee laughs humorlessly, feeling hollow. "I was gonna go all out. Paint me some new motherfucking scriptures in their blood, be the vengeful god I always thought I was praying to. If there had to be sacrifices, I'm glad it was him. Nepeta..." He trails off weakly. "I was real mad. And she just got in the way."

 _And the others?_ the Old Goat asks understandingly, already knowing the answer, not judging, just waiting patiently for Gamzee to say it. _Your friends? Tavros? Karkat? It would have been him next, you know._

"I was so mad. Just so motherfuckin furious. Forgot what it was like to feel shit off the slime. Forgot how to up and stop."

 _You'll learn, Little Goat. It isn't easy for anyone, and I was never there to teach you._

"I can't now. They won't... won't let me. Just gonna keep me stoned the rest of my motherfuckin life, 'cause I ain't safe when I'm sober. They think... think I'm some monster, like there's some sickness in my head they gotta keep down. Say it's okay now, 'cause they up and fixed me. I wasn't broken," he murmurs, the statement more question than anything.

 _No, Little Goat, you were never broken._ That deep laugh envelops him, wraps around him, safe and loving and accepting. _You are perfect no matter who you are._

\- - - - - - - - - -

He wakes screaming (don't leave, DON'T GO, don't let it be a dream, DON'T LEAVE ME AGAIN), and someone is shaking him roughly by the shoulders, dragging him away from the Old Goat. Something acid in him boils over. He comes up fighting, his feet and fists flailing. His knuckles collide painfully with bone and with a triumphant howl he drags the intruder down and keeps punching, driving that head into the floor, flecking his hands with brilliant mutant red.

"OH GOD DON'T KILL ME" Karkat screams and seizes his wrists, so tightly that it hurts, and it's only then that the haze clears from Gamzee's eyes and the dream fades away to wherever dim place it is that all forgotten dreams go.

They're lying in a tangled heap on the floor, Gamzee on top of Karkat, and the mutant has a black eye and a bloody nose, and sopor spilled all down his front. Karkat is muttering a long string of creative explicatives, his eyes wide with mixed anger and fear. "Okay! How about we both take a couple of deep breaths, and then you can decide you don't want me dead, and we'll take it from there."

Gamzee's body slowly goes limp and he collapses against Karkat, breathing heavily. "Sorry, brother. Crazy fucking dream."

"Oh what the fuck, Gamzee!" Behind his fury, Karkat's voice sounds oddly weak. "This is why we sleep INSIDE the recuperacoons; because if we don't we have crazy fucking dreams and we wake up punching things."

"Sorry."

"Yeah you better be. God, I thought you were about to go all batshit insane on me again. What the fuck were you thinking?"

"Wasn't thinking much of anything, I guess," Gamzee responds.

"Well OBVIOUSLY."

Gamzee gets to his feet and gives Karkat a hand in standing up, and the two of them sit on the edge of the metal tub that is Gamzee's recuperacoon for a while. Karkat presses his sleeve to his face to stem the flow of blood from his nose, and after a moment Gamzee sighs and gives a little tug on Karkat's hair to make him lean his head forward. "Make it stop faster. Probably gonna want to put some ice on that too, keep it from swelling up."

"And since when do you know anything about first aid?" Karkat grumbles, and Gamzee almost chuckles at the halfhearted attempt he's making to hide the blood behind his hand, more out of habit now than necessity. He looks away, because he knows Karkat will start getting twitchy otherwise.

"Aw, you know, bro. I used to hang out with Tavros a lot. He was one accident-prone motherfucker. You pick things up."

Karkat starts to laugh roughly, but he stops abruptly when he turns and sees the look in Gamzee's eyes, the expression behind his painted-on smile. This isn't something either of them want to talk about; they wouldn't know how.

"So. Ice, huh?"

"Yeah. Just put it on your eye so it don't swell shut. ...Sorry," he adds again, wiping his bloody knuckles off on his shirt.

"Whatever. I'm gonna go get cleaned up. Fuck, I'm gonna look like shit tomorrow." Karkat wanders out, still hunched over with one hand clasping the bridge of his nose.

It's only when the door to Gamzee's sleeping area slides shut with a hydraulic whoosh that a beat of pain shoots through his head and he remembers why Karkat was there in the first place. There's a glass of sopor slime still lying on the floor, toppled on its side and forgotten by both of them, its contents slowly spreading in a viscous green puddle across the ground. Gamzee picks it up and looks at it for a while, his eyes watching his dark room through a veil of green while the withdrawal headache drums against his skull.

Karkat forgot to stay, forgot to watch and make sure he drank it all down.

For some reason that he can't quite fathom, but he thinks might have something to do with a dream he can't remember, he tips the glass over. What little slime remains in it drips slowly into his recuperacoon, mingling with the green sludge already coating the thing.

When Karkat returns a few minutes later with an ice pack pressed to his eye, looking somewhat panicked, Gamzee grins docily at him and hands over the empty glass. "Chill, best friend. Everything is motherfucking fine."


	2. Chapter 2

When he sleeps again, his lusus is beneath him. He lies on his back in an empty ocean and stares up at an empty sky without a word, knowing he'll wake up soon and be left behind again; he's always left behind.

He awakes on the floor drenched in an icy sweat, a war-drum pounding in his skull.

\- - - - - - - - - -

Gamzee drags himself out of his respiteblock well before anyone else is awake and stumbles off toward the communal showers. Like everything else in the lab, the room is massive; lined with hundreds of brushed-metal stalls meant for hastily rinsing the vat liquid from batch after batch of cloned carapaces on their way to the battlefield, all lit by the dim industrial glow of long fluorescents set into the celling above.

He passes a row of sinks (his reflection wavering a bit in the neglected mirror as he pulls off his pajamas and tosses them carelessly to the tile) and steps into the first shower stall. Stands below the showerhead and lets scalding water soak his hair and skin until a slurry of green sopor and gray and white greasepaint is spiraling around the drain between his toes, in hopes that maybe the rushing of the water will drown out the painful drumming in the back of his head.

( _it's aight, brother. MOTHERFUCKIN OKAY. you purge that shit from your system and there ain't gonna be a fuckin headache no more. IT WENT AWAY BEFORE. it'll go away again._ )

He reapplies his makeup precisely and methodically. Makes cheerful faces at the mirror while his sopping wet hair drips into a puddle around his feet, and under all the paint they almost look genuine.

\- - - - - - - - - -

With a whir of machinery, the blur of light that is Karkat and Sollux comes together atop the transportilizer in the main room. They're still sleepy-eyed and damp with slime, Karkat sporting a vibrant black bruise under one eye and leading the sightless Sollux by the arm.

"-just saying you could TALK to me once in a while. Saying 'oh yeah we're still friends' doesn't really mean shit if the only person you hang out with is Terezi."

"Hehe, oh my god KK, how jealous are you?"

"I'm not jealous, you eyeless grubbrain, I'm just reminding you that hey! You do in fact have other friends! What an amazing development!"

"You know she's teaching me how to do her weird seesniffing thing. You really want to spend your life helping me find my way to the load gaper?"

"Well maybe I do!"

"Sure you do, KK. Whatever satisfies your weird passive-agressive thing with TZ." Karkat gives an exaggerated groan and Sollux laughs. "...Hehe, passive-agressive. Passsssssssive-agressssssssssive. That is such a great word."

Karkat carefully guides Sollux to his computer, a scowl on his face, and as they pass Gamzee's seat he gives a small wave, which his best friend steadfastly ignores. "Hey best friend. How's your eye?"

"Not in the mood today, Gamzee," Karkat mutters, while Sollux glances around sightlessly and settles his gaze on a point slightly to Gamzee's left.

"Hey GZ. Something wrong with your eye, KK? What happened?"

"Fell down some stairs yesterday," Karkat grumbles shortly and sits down at his own computer.

"Nah, that ain't what up and happened. Don't you remember? You-"

"Fell down the fucking stairs!" repeats Karkat loudly. "What do you want, a press release? It's fine now and I do not want to fucking talk about it." He boots up his own computer and immediately opens up the media player, filling the room with a tinny rendition of the Thresh Prince theme song, pounding through the cheap speakers and reverberating off the metal walls of the lab.

"Alright, what really happened, GZ? Because if nobody tells me I'm just going to assume it's something really embarrassing."

"Aw yeah, he-" He's drowned out as Karkat raises his voice rather manically, his tuneless singing joining the song playing on his computer. For the briefest of seconds Gamzee recalls that same voice breaking in fear, those wide, terrified eyes, Karkat's hands gripping his bloodstained wrists and begging not to be hit again...

And without missing a beat, he finishes smoothly with: "-fell _up_ the stairs. You shoulda seen it, brother, he was just trippin the motherfuck over his own two feet, smacked his face on the landing. Hilarious as hell."

Sollux gives a snort of laughter.

"You two are the worst friends," Karkat grumbles, eliciting more giggles from Sollux. "Somebody go alchemize me some breakfast."

"Sure, your majesty. Breakfast is served." Sollux feels around randomly on the countertop in front of him, locates some unidentifiable piece of machinery, and tosses it in Karkat's general direction. It hits Karkat on the head with a dull _clunk_.

"Dammit Sollux, you almost got my other eye!"

"Nothing wrong with a little motherfuckin symmetry," Gamzee returns flippantly, while Sollux laughs harder and adds with mock resentment, "Yeah sure, expect the blind guy to aim."

"Worst. Fucking. Friends."

But by now all three of them are laughing, and for a little while they're back on Alternia, exchanging jabs over Trollslum as only the closest of friends can, pretending the world hasn't ended. It's not until Terezi steps in through the transportilizer and asks them why they're throwing electronics at each other that the illusion shatters.

Karkat goes sullen and silent, and Gamzee remembers that no, things aren't the same.

\- - - - - - - - - -

They watch him all the time. He's never been so acutely aware of that before. The others look up whenever he enters the room, keep their eyes on him, their pupils flickering to follow his every little movement until at last he settles down at his computer. (There is no horn pile now. While he was still unconscious they burned his horns in the same pyre as their dead.)

Kanaya gives him sopor and watches him drink. Gamzee suppresses his gag reflex long enough to drain the glass, and then, when she's distracted by other things (fussing over Karkat's eye, biting her lip as she forces him to hold still so she can look it over with a disapproving little frown on her face), he runs to the load gaper and makes himself vomit.

The fog rolls in anyway, but it isn't as thick, and the headache doesn't quite disappear.

\- - - - - - - - - -

He never sleeps in his recuperacoon anymore. Prefers the cold tile of the floor, and swimming in a sea of dreams he can never remember. When Kanaya (almost always Kanaya now, and never Karkat) comes to wake him and force yet another dose of sopor on him, she gives him a strange look but asks no questions, and Gamzee gets the odd impression that he's not the only one whose recuperacoon is gathering dust.

He sleeps, and is lost in the ocean.

"You still here?"

 _Always, Little Goat._

"...just checking."

\- - - - - - - - - -

All too quickly, he gets twitchy.

Sopor dulls the senses, makes him lazy. Without it he has too much energy and nothing to do with it: mind and muscles full of fire. He can't stand sitting at his computer for any length of time, has to get up and pace, and when Karkat inevitably shouts at him for being distracting, he leaves the main room and wanders off somewhere to exhaust himself dancing wildly through the hallways.

His frenzied murals are still there, remnants of darker days that no one has thought to scrape away. The blood is darkened and flaking away by now, but as the toxins drain from him and his head clears of fog and mist and miracles, they become the last sparse streaks of color in an unwavering world of industrial gray, lines and sharp edges.

He finds himself returning to them far too often, staring at them intensely as if making up for all the miracles he can no longer see. Forgetting, for a while, that they're Tavros, Nepeta, Feferi: people instead of paints. His hands get strangely shaky when surrounded by bare walls.

He sleeps, and is lost in the ocean.

\- - - - - - - - - -

In the midst of a sleep cycle he's jolted awake by a sharp pain in his side. Still half-asleep he rolls over and makes an instinctive grab at the empty air, expecting his hands to close on skin or cloth or hair, something he can scratch and strike and hurt. Something sharp and pointed weaves its way through his flailing arms and jabs him in the chest, and at last Gamzee clumsily seizes it and registers the cherry red tip of Terezi's cane.

She's cackling playfully, prodding him awake and standing just beyond where his flailing fists might have reached her. Sitting up, Gamzee rather resentfully yanks the cane out of her hands and flings it away. "...motherfuckin can't let a brother get his beauty sleep on."

"Ooh, tetchy today, aren't we?" Terezi comments, grinning, and wiggles the glass of sopor in her hand. "Up and at 'em, Gamzers. I brought you a present to make the crazy go away."

Gamzee makes a noise halfway between a gag and a groan. "Do I gotta?"

"Yep. Now take this cup before the clumsy blind girl breaks it." She leans casually in the doorframe and watches while he mimes drinking, until he eventually remembers that she can't actually see him, and just dumps the glass out. "Good boy," she comments as he hands it back.

Terezi makes a show of groping around for her cane, although Gamzee suspects she knows exactly where it is and is just trying to make him feel guilty about throwing it. Her hands are spread rather theatrically out in front of her, and as Gamzee watches, some drifting thought reminds him that it shouldn't be her carrying that glass. As she at last snatches her cane up, he asks, "Where's Karkat?"

Terezi tilts her head unconcernedly. "Asleep? He's gotta do that SOME time, no matter how big a hissy fit he throws about it."

"It was all being his turn."

"Well who knows, Gamzee. Maybe he came down with a sudden case of not wanting to be punched in the eye."

"Oh. Didn't think he told nobody about that."

Terezi laughs. "No, he told us all some bullshit story about falling down the stairs, but those rotten-apple bruises betray his lies. They are most forensically the bruises of a troll who was punched in the face, and honestly I think you scared him shitless. I most graciously offered my help for the night because poor Karkles needs his rest." She prods him in the chest with her cane again. "And because I'm not stupid enough to get punched."

She heads for the door, leaving Gamzee to stand there feeling oddly dejected in her wake. Karkat isn't there because he's afraid, because he's expecting to be hurt. ( _they don't like us. MOTHERFUCKERS CAN'T DECIDE IF WE'RE A BURDEN OR A THREAT. oh brother, don't they know we're both?_ )

"Hey," says Terezi's voice from the hallway, and she sticks her head back into the room with a genuinely quizzical expression on her face. "Do you talk to him? When you sleep?"

"Uh..." Gamzee begins, his mind still on Karkat, but she clarifies a moment later.

"Your lusus, I mean."

"Oh. I dunno, girl, I think I might. Don't really remember what my motherfuckin think pan gets its business on about when I'm nettin them zees."

As always, she makes a wry face at his slang. "I talk to mine. I haven't slept in my recuperacoon in weeks, because when I sleep on the floor I have dreams about flying through a forest with her, just talking about any dumb old thing. I never remember what we talk about afterward, but who cares? It's just amazing having a lusus."

And Gamzee nods, because he of all people can understand. "...You think it's real?" he hazards, after a moment.

"I think," Terezi comments philosophically, "that 'real' is a stupid word to use when you just made a universe out of frogs. Go back to sleep, Gamzee."

\- - - - - - - - - -

Karkat has vanished once again into the depths of the lab, off to hide for a few hours in the hollow metal shell of the paradox cloning room - the one place on this meteor that remains solely private and secluded and his. The rest of them have long since stopped questioning it.

Gamzee looks up from his screen (the long string of random letters he's been meticulously color-coding, for no reason he can think of) to gaze vacantly out across the computers. Across the room, Sollux and Terezi are plotting quietly over a half-finished comic, not nearly so loud and obnoxious now that there's no Karkat to rile. Kanaya's computer is bright with green text, hers and one of the humans, and she types slowly and thoughtfully, one slim, sunlit finger hovering over her shift key. Vriska, predictably, is nowhere to be found.

His eyes stray across the other computers. Equius's workstation, where grooves have been worn in the countertop by the pressure of his idle hands. (deep and rich and blue, so beautifully dark against his fingers) Nepeta's computer, decorated cheerfully by colorful drawings and bits of yarn. Eridan's pile of rubble, Feferi's little-used keyboard. Tavros's empty chair, its brushed metal gathering a fine layer of dust. And he thinks that maybe Karkat has the right idea, escaping to a place that isn't so very _theirs_.

Karkat's screen is still glowing faintly with blue text where a Trollian chat window has been opened and abandoned, frozen forever outside of time until Karkat bothers to access it again. With another cautionary glance across the room, ( _of course they're watching you, brother, DON'T THINK FOR A SECOND THEY'RE NOT, just 'cause they ain't motherfuckin looking._ ) Gamzee slips out of his own chair and slides into Karkat's. Wondering, just for once, what his best friend finds so very fascinating about the human who types in blue. He scrolls randomly through the conversation, skimming.

EB: come on, don't even say that about total recall. i thought we were friends.  
EB: anyway! i am the super smarty-pants human expert here.  
EB: that means that i am both a human who is an expert, and an expert on humans.   
CG: LET'S SUSPEND MY DISBELIEF OF YOUR VAPID IGNORANCE EVEN FARTHER AND PRETEND I BELIEVE THAT'S A "THING" AND THAT MOREOVER YOU SOMEHOW EMBODY IT.  
CG: THAT DOESN'T CHANGE THE FACT THAT NO AMOUNT OF EXPERT OPINIONS WILL EVER CHANGE MY MIND ABOUT THAT CINEMATIC SLUDGE.  
CG: IN NO CULTURE WILL THAT PLOT EVER MAKE FOR A COHERENT MOVIE.   
EB: i knoooooooow man.  
EB: that's the beauty of it! it doesn't make any sense and it leaves you guessing.  
EB: is arnold schwarzenegger really a spy from the future or was the whole thing a dream?   
CG: BUT THEN THE WHOLE FILM WOULD BE POINTLESS.   
EB: no way!  
EB: that whole movie is totally cool, i can't believe you would doubt that.   
CG: IT'S ALMOST PATHETIC HOW LITTLE FAITH YOU HAVE IN MY ABILITY TO DOUBT.  
CG: OH GOD, SHE'S DOING IT AGAIN.   
EB: uh, what?  
EB: hey, are you ok?   
CG: I JUST  
CG: I NEED TO GET AWAY FROM THE MANIACAL CACKLING FOR A LITTLE WHILE.   
EB: um  
EB: ok. is it terezi again?   
CG: IT IS EVERYTHING, JOHN. IF YOU NEED ME, I'LL BE OVER HERE IN THE FETAL POSITION, WEEPING ACID FROM MY VESTIGIAL SORROW GLANDS WHILE I RETHINK MY LIFE CHOICES.   
EB: is that a joke or are you being serious? because that is pretty sad, karkat!   
CG: OF COURSE IT WAS A JOKE, DON'T BE A FUCKING IDIOT.  
CG: TROLLS DON'T WEEP ACID.   
EB: i meant the rest of it. i know a lot of stuff has happened to you and if you maybe want to talk about it we could do that.  
EB: or i could get rose and you could talk to her?  
EB: she's kind of speaking this weird demon language right now but we could probably run it through babel fish or something.   
CG: THE EXTENT OF YOUR INEPTITUDE JUST  
CG: IT JUST FLOORS ME, JOHN. HOW EASY IT IS TO BELIEVE THAT YOUR SPECIES EVOLVED FROM SOMETHING THAT THROWS ITS OWN POOP.  
CG: THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR WELL-MEANING BUT COMPLETELY USELESS ATTEMPT TO HELP.   
EB: well geeze, i was just trying to be a good friend. it would be pretty crappy if i just let you go crazy on me.  
EB: karkat?  
EB: you still there, dude?   
CG: YEAH.  
CG: I HAVE TO GO DO SOMETHING TO VALIDATE MY EXISTENCE.  
CG: MAYBE WHEN I GET BACK YOU CAN TELL ME MORE ABOUT YOUR SHITTY EARTH MOVIE.  
CG: FOR THE RECORD, THAT WILL BE INSTANTLY FROM YOUR PERSPECTIVE. DON'T WAIT UP.

It ends there, and Gamzee stares at the window for a while, his restless fingers making idle clicking noises against the keyboard. There's an odd jealousy in him suddenly; a hint of that diamond that twisted at the sight of Karkat and Kanaya.

 _friend._ says the him behind the fog: a fog not so thick as it might have been, drawing away in wisps and draining the color from the world. His stomach churns, and there's a familiar stabbing pain between his eyes. _BUT HE'S OUR BEST FRIEND, AIN'T HE, BROTHER? ain't right for some motherfuckin alien filth to call him that. HE AIN'T GOT THE RIGHT._

His hand hits the caps lock key before he can think about what he's doing, and then he's typing, gray letters flashing across the screen and spiraling out into space like a bridge between worlds. Terezi's head turns, her sharp ears alerted by the quiet clicking of Karkat's keys. But sightless as she is, he knows she has no idea what he's saying, and after a while she goes back to her own computer screen, Gamzee forgotten.

NO, HE AIN'T GOT THE RIGHT. and we'll make sure he ain't got the opportunity, either.

\- - - - - - - - - -

Half an hour later the back of his chair is seized and abruptly jerked away from the computer, and he turns to find his face inches from Karkat's livid eyes. "What the fuck are you doing?"

Gamzee blinks slowly at him, watching Karkat's face slide in and out of focus in time with the pounding of his head. Behind his back his left hand quickly and quietly closes the chat window. "Hey best friend."

"What the fuck are you doing at my computer?" Karkat repeats, and it's strangely comforting to see him angry again after weeks of tired emptiness. Thankful for the greasepaint obscuring his expressions, (oh god, his head is pounding) Gamzee puts on his best innocently dazed face and plays stoned for all he's worth.

"Aw shit, this was all being your computer? Thought it was mine."

"No it is not yours, you circus freak, and if you were spying on my conversations I swear I will flip this chair almost as hard as I'll be flipping my shit."

"You was gettin' your conversate on, bro?" He smiles balmily. "I was just watching the colors, man. It's a miracle, how they all be swirlin' around and shit, you know? Sometimes they're all up in my computer, sometimes they just motherfuckin move their magic over to yours. Who even wants to know how that works?"

Karkat gives him a long, searching look, before finally releasing the chair and muttering, "Just get out of my seat. I've got some major plans to make."

Except Gamzee knows now that Karkat isn't making plans; he never was. He's having inane, pointless conversations about movies, lying to them all because he's helpless and afraid and breaking, and he knows there's nothing he can do.

\- - - - - - - - - -

Gamzee isn't sure what happens after that - some days, withdrawl is hell. But eventually he makes it back to his own workstation, forehead buried in his folded arms while he churns on a sea of nausea and headache, Kanaya rubbing his back again and murmuring something consoling. ("I know it's not easy for you, Gamzee, but you'll get another dose in an hour or so. I am truly sorry we can't give you more. You've been so strong through all of this...") ( _OH, SHUT THE FUCK UP, SISTER. if only you knew._ )

Off to one side, Karkat clicks agitatedly through the chat windows on his screen. Bewilderment spreading across his face as, again and again, he opens a chat with John, and again and again, John blocks him without a word.

\- - - - - - - - - -

Later he notices Terezi looking up withdrawal symptoms on the human internet, and decides not to complain about the headache any more.

He sleeps, and is lost in the ocean.

\- - - - - - - - - -

 _You shouldn't have done that, Little Goat._

"I didn't know how to stop."

 _Learn._

\- - - - - - - - - -

The claustrophobia weighs on them all; worse and worse as time goes on and nothing changes. They spend their days confined to the dim, isolated lab, helpless and useless and forever waiting. To die, to live, to snap from the pressure like a bone without marrow.

It's Karkat who breaks first, and as brittle and full of fractures as he was, they all saw it coming.

"God DAMN it, Terezi!"

He spins around abruptly in his chair and lobs his sickle across the room at her, and Terezi, who's been laughing with Sollux about something as usual, goes silent as it smashes through her computer screen and sends sparks and shards of glass flying. The lights throughout the lab flicker eerily for a second before going bright again.

"Karkat..." Kanaya begins, standing up quickly, and Karkat glares at her with wild eyes.

"Don't 'Karkat' me! She's been doing this for days! Laughing at that fucking human's jokes as loudly as she fucking can, like nobody else has any goddamn fucking work to get done!"

Terezi's grin slowly returns, spreading almost cruelly across her face. "Because you're doing so much work. Flirting with the blueberry human and yelling at the sour apple one about her passwords."

"I am making plans to get us off this deathrock! You're the one who's flirting with someone who isn't even your own fucking species!" He stands up abruptly and shoves his chair over, seeming to relish the resounding crash it makes upon contact with the metal floor. "Oh Davey Davey Dave, let me smell your candy red blood! Let me draw you pictures, Dave! Let me make you shitty stalker comics about how cool you are and what our hideous mutant grubspawn will look like!" Terezi opens her mouth to make some comeback, and he shouts right over her. "You're never going to MEET him, Pyrope! You're going to die here in this dentacle-crushing steel deathtrap because your glorious leader was driven demented by the most annoying laugh to ever shriek out of some blind freak's chitinous gullet!"

"Oooooh John!" Terezi mocks gleefully, echoing Karkat while Gamzee, Kanaya, and Sollux look on, dumbstruck. "John you're pretty much my bestest bud now! Look at me yelling all these insults at you while you derp it up, how about I draw you up a shipping chart with my crappy art skills; they're almost as bad as my crappy social skills! My barely concealed blackrom crush on you is the stuff of legend, too bad you're totally my palhoncho friendbro, a-herp-derp-derp!"

"How about you take that steaming pile of it's-none-of-your-fucking-business and top it off with a heaping helping of leave my friends the hell alone, you shithive color-drunk lunatic!"

"I don't care about your boring old best human hatefriend, Karkat."

"Really? REALLY? Because you sure weren't shy about stealing Sollux and turning him into another crazy cackling blind girl! Shut up Sollux," he adds with a snap, rounding on Sollux in fury as the other troll makes a vaguely affronted noise. "You don't talk to me anymore! You never talk to anyone but HER!"

And there at last is the root of the problem, because Karkat's voice sounds strained and as he glares at Sollux there's something painful about the look in his eyes, something that has nothing to do with Terezi.

"I'm fucking sick of it! I get it! I must be the most disgusting piece of pestilence that ever slithered from the brooding caverns because my team is dropping like buzzwinged arthropods and no one has any fucking faith in me anymore, everything I try is doomed to crash and burn, I GET IT! John fucking Derpbert won't even talk to me anymore, and once that happens you know you're gunning so hard for rock bottom Skaia might as well fling you at somebody's hive!"

"John's not talking to you?" Sollux begins, but Karkat interrupts yet again.

"Nobody said you had to be my fucking friend! Stop pretending you still care and go lick a rainbow with your crazy girlfriend! I've got other friends! I don't need you!!"

He turns and storms out of the room, vanishing into atoms and air as his feet hit the transportilizer and leaving a stunned silence in his wake.

After a moment, Terezi shrugs and with some effort pulls the sickle out of her shattered computer screen, turning it over absentmindedly in her hands. "Someone woke up on the wrong side of the recuperacoon tonight." Beside her Sollux sits silently with his knees drawn up to his chest, his blind eyes staring with a kind of blankness at the empty air.

"I'll talk to him," Kanaya murmurs, transportilizing out after Karkat.

"She won't," Terezi informs the world in general, giving the sickle a few lazy swings. "He'll lock himself in his part of the lab like he always does, and good luck getting him out again." She's not even facing him, but Gamzee can swear he feels her eyes. Weighing him, as if peering into the depths of dark and unknown waters. He stands up abruptly.

"Girl. Lay the motherfuck off." His voice is sharper than he intended, and as he stares her down she turns her head slowly to grin at him. Gamzee turns away sharply, and he can hear her giggling to herself as he steps onto the transportilizer and dissipates.

\- - - - - - - - - -

Gamzee makes his way to Karkat's part of the lab and stands in the hallway, watching Kanaya call out soft placations while she types random passwords into the lock mechanism, in hopes that one of them will open Karkat's door.

"I don't suppose he confided his password in you," she mutters at last, without much hope of success in her voice.

"Nah, sister, nobody tells me nothing." _which is stupid. HE KNOWS_ MY _PASSWORD._

Kanaya sighs and sits down with her back resting against the door, and the soft glow of her skin makes patterns of light dance faintly across the walls. She looks tired, Gamzee thinks: much older than her meager six sweeps. "It isn't really fair, what happened to him, is it? What happened to all of us. We're not equipped to deal with this kind of responsibility, and it shows. We're coming apart at the seams."

Gamzee sits down next to her, his gangly legs splayed out across the corridor. "I ain't gonna pretend I understood a motherfuckin' word of that, girl."

She smiles slightly. "Then I will not pretend to expect you to."

They sit in silence for a while, side by side. Gamzee gazes distantly at the brushed-metal of the far wall, fingertips tapping idly with the paintings he can't create, and remembers sitting at Karkat's computer; typing in capital gray to an increasingly flustered human until he was finally blocked.

"It's my fault," he confesses at last. Kanaya glances over at him, an expression on her face that he can't quite read, but that carries strange overtones of pity.

"Oh Gamzee, don't think that. None of this is wholly to blame on any of us. There were a lot of... factors."

"Nah, sister, I mean..." But he stops. Doesn't correct her, doesn't tell her what he said to John, because then she'll know; then they'll be forcing sopor down his throat again. "...yeah. Motherfuckin factors and shit all up in here." His hands trace a pattern against the floor.

"It wasn't you, you know." She says it gently, her eyes paying careful attention to his. "Whatever that was, it wasn't you. It was someone else, someone who isn't coming back."

( _girl, you are the DUMBEST PIECE OF SHIT i ever met._ ) Gamzee gives a weak laugh, while against the floor his hands mimic the motions of painting in blood. Kanaya's eyes flicker downward, and he rather forcibly stills them.

"Are you feeling better today?" she asks.

"Been aight," Gamzee says, and it isn't a lie, exactly. Not with Karkat as his comparison.

She nods, looking tired and uneasy, and looks away. Gamzee gazes at her profile, his eyes tracing the curve of her jaw and watching her skin pulse softly with light. Alone in the depths of the lab with her, close enough to reach out and touch her face, Kanaya looks strangely paper thin; breakable in a million different ways.

( _kill her._ )

He has to clench his hands into fists to keep them from moving, from drafting their miracles against every surface, designs that would look beautiful, _so BEAUTIFUL_ in jade green - the exquisite and chaotic patterns of a wrathful god in the throes of creation.

 _KILL HER,_ the thought repeats, and it makes so much _sense_ ; she's the one who keeps bringing him sopor, she's the one who forces him to drink it, in the entire lab it's her alone who can overpower him, her alone who's holding him back, keeping him from being a god...

"Gamzee?" says Kanaya beside him, and Gamzee sits stiffly, breathing hard, his vascular pump beating almost painfully quickly against his ribcage and his head pounding as something behind the dissipating fog screams _she's alone, SHE'S VULNERABLE, you could do it now, SNAP HER MOTHERFUCKIN NECK and hide the body someplace secret AND NOBODY WOULD EVER HAVE TO KNOW..._

"I just remembered something," he states abruptly, scrambling to his feet and backing away from her, a forced smile on his face. "Motherfucking... miracle clown shit that I had to get done. Prayers and religious stuff, you know, stuff you motherfuckers think is stupid."

She gives him an odd look, but Gamzee is already striding down the hallway as fast as his legs will carry him without breaking into a run, calling over his shoulder, "Just let me know when Karkat's got his motherfuckin' chill on, aight sister?"

He reaches his respiteblock in a rush and dips his spasming hands into his recuperacoon, drenching them in slime. With manic, frenzied movements he sweeps his palms across the walls, leaving long smears of green ( _it's the wrong shade of green THE WRONG GREEN we need jade green_ ), until he's covered the room in his frantic scrawling.

Gamzee stands panting, staring at it, as gradually he regains control of his breathing and feels his vascular pump begin to slow, adrenaline still racing through his veins.

After a minute or two he takes his shirt off, bunches it up in his hands, and begins to scrub the sopor away, wincing slightly as the color melts away to reveal dull gray once again. It's the wrong shade of green, anyway.

\- - - - - - - - - -

The days pass, and Karkat stays locked away. Kanaya alchemizes food for him periodically and leaves it outside his door. He must eat it, Gamzee supposes, because she brings back empty plates, but her lips are tight and her eyes distant, and he wonders if ( _hopes_ ) she'll be the next to shatter.

He sleeps, and is lost in the ocean.

\- - - - - - - - - -

"'Lay the motherfuck off?' That's awfully ashen of you, Gamzee."

Terezi's snuck up on him in the communal showers, and as Gamzee applies his makeup over sunken eyes, he can see her face blurred by the foggy mirror, hovering behind him. They're alone in the great empty room, their voices echoing tinnily off the endless rows of shower stalls. He's tried his best not to be alone with anyone, not since Kanaya, because when they're isolated and off-guard, his friends ( _HIS SACRIFICES_ ) suddenly seem so much easier to kill.

Terezi is standing uncomfortably close to his back, and Gamzee tries not to think about how very teal her blood is.

"Wasn't nothing like that," he mutters, wishing she'd go away. "Just had a thought you should up and give the motherfucker some space. He gets enough shit from everything else all going down, he don't need none from you."

She's very, very close now, and he can almost feel her breath on the back of his neck, as if she's testing to see how much she can push his personal space before he calls her out. Gamzee very steadfastly ignores her and continues carefully applying his greasepaint.

"Really? Because it sounds to me," she states with a grin, "like you're desperate for some palerom, and you've been acting all responsible and auspisticy towards Karkat because it's painfully obvious that Kanaya's already snatched him up."

In the midst of drawing the line of his mouth, Gamzee's hands go still.

"Do you deny it?" Terezi continues, in the interrogating voice he's heard her use for courtroom dramas.

"Girl, it ain't like that and I don't got my recall on about that shit being any of your fucking business."

"Mister Makara, do you deny it?"

"Mother FUCK, sister, what do you want-" he begins, and whips around angrily to face her...

...only to be cut off instantly as she stands on tiptoe and presses her lips to his.

Gamzee stands in limp shock for a moment as Terezi kisses him with all the enthusiasm and gratuitous tongue of a small child with an ice cream cone. Then he's shoving her away almost violently, eyes wide while she cackles boisterously beneath a face smeared with makeup. "What the... Terezi girl what the motherfucking hell? Just... whoa... what?"

Her laughter cuts off abruptly, her face going flat, as if a switch has been flipped. "That's what I thought. Gamzee Makara, you should taste like sopor. And you don't."

He panics.

Before Terezi can react he's grabbed a handful of her shirt and slammed her into the row of sinks, hard enough to send spiraling cracks across the mirror behind her head. His own head is screaming, _she knows SHE MOTHERFUCKING KNOWS they're gonna put us back on the poison BUT SHE CAN'T TELL NOBODY IF WE RIP OUT HER FUCKIN THROAT._ He slams a dazed Terezi into the mirror again.

"Now how can you say that, when you motherfuckers keep me too high to motherfucking _think?!_ Pretty sure I just wandered in here all baked as fuck!"

"Gamzee-" she gasps.

"Just following the motherfucking colors, who knows why I all be doin' what I up and do? Ain't that what you want? AIN'T THAT WHAT YOU MOTHERFUCKIN WANT?" He throws her to the ground as hard as he can, and she slides a good twenty feet across the tile. Gamzee strides across the room toward her, face twisting into a sadistic smile. "Well the joke's on you, sister, 'cause just 'cause you keep me too fuzzy and fucked up to motherfuckin slaughter you all don't mean I don't up and want the fuck out of it!"

She's pulled herself to her feet, and the floor where she was lying is flecked with teal. With a quick leap, Terezi throws herself into one of the shower stalls and hurriedly pulls the curtain back. "Do you talk to your lusus when you sleep?" Gamzee mocks, his feet smearing the blood beneath him as he reaches the stall. "Well I got a surprise for you, girl; now you never gotta wake up. You and your dead dragon all up in the dark carnival, chillin' like two choice broettes while I make some real good use outta that pretty teal-"

He rips the curtain aside, and the end of Terezi's cane strikes him hard in the stomach. Gamzee stumbles back, winded, and in his brief moment of surprise Terezi throws all her weight against him and knocks him to the ground. With a tiny _click_ she pulls her dragon-headed cane apart, unsheathing a hidden blade and pressing it almost casually to a point directly between his eyes.

"Do you know why Karkat didn't tell anyone how he really got that black eye?" she says cheerfully, sitting on top of his chest while a thin trail of blood runs down the back of her head. "There's something you should know, Gamzee. I mean, we all decided not to tell you, but I figure to hell with it, I'm a better friend than that."

Gamzee remains motionless, going cross-eyed as he stares at her knife. His vascular pump is hammering hard and fast, and against her weight his lungs feel void of air.

"While you were unconscious and we didn't know who you were going to wake up as," Terezi goes on, "The rest of us had a long talk, and decided that we'd give it a test run. See if we could turn you back into your old derpity self. And if that didn't work, if you ever became a threat again, we'd kill you. No leeway, no third chances. Just dead, dead, dead."

She pulls the blade away at last and slides the cane back together. "So you could kill me right now, if you wanted to. But first let's take a couple deep breaths and calm down from our fucking flipout murder bonanza, and decide if that would really, _really_ be worth it."

Gamzee nods slightly, breathing hard. Terezi stands up and offers him a hand in getting to his feet.

Then he claps his hands to his mouth, sprints the length of the room, and is violently sick in the sink.

When Gamzee at last comes up for air, swimming with nausea and throat and stomach aching, Terezi is standing beside him and running her fingers over the spiderweb of cracks across the mirror. "Sorry..." he states vaguely, reluctant to open his mouth again.

"Mm-hm?"

"Didn' mean it. Didn' mean t' up and do that shit. I was just mad."

"That's what they all say," Terezi says in her prosecutor voice.

"Just real fuckin mad."

"Why aren't you taking your sopor?" She asks the question abruptly, still facing the mirror.

"I dunno," Gamzee says, hunched pathetically over the sink. "Just... just figured a motherfucker what's too high to think can't be who that motherfucker really is. Nobody's right but mine to decide who I am all down in my immortal soul."

"Well listen up, Gamzee's immortal soul," Terezi states seriously. Her head turns to face him, sightless red eyes meeting his. "You aren't my problem. Whether you're high or not isn't my problem either. And I'm not blaming you for all the people you killed the first time around because you didn't have a choice in going sober. Let's downgrade those counts of murder to manslaughter. But," she adds sharply, "this time you _do_ have a choice. You could be swimming in miracles any time you wanted to, so if you freak out and do your killer clown thing again, I'm going to treat you like the criminal you are. Got that?"

"Yeah." He pushes himself slowly away from the sink and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. "Guess you want me back on the sopor."

"Oh hell no," says Terezi with a grin.

Gamzee gives her a dumbstruck look.

"You're more fun when you're sober. You have coherent conversations, you make passive aggressive jabs... I mean GOD Gamzee, you've been pretending to be high for like a week now, and _nobody_ has caught on and _it is hilarious._ So I'm not going to tell you to to do the right thing, because once again, not my problem."

She fumbles with her sylladex for a moment before pulling out a small green package. "Which reminds me! I came in here to give you this."

It's her treasured box of colored chalk, the one she's never let anyone touch. Terezi presses it into his hands, and Gamzee stares down at it: the bright colors standing neatly in a row in their thin cardboard package, each a different, perfect hue.

"For your creepy clown murals," she explains. "Better than blood. Just go easy on the red; you're borrowing that, not keeping it."

He runs his fingers along the chalk, letting the colors stain his hands. Teal and mustard and jade green and candy apple red...

"Thanks, Terezi," he says quietly.

"Oh, don't thank me. I am pretty sure this conversation never happened. In fact I'm not even here right now. I'm at the alchemiter getting breakfast and anyone who says otherwise is a filthy liar, slandering my good name like that, who do they think they are?"

For the first time in a long while, Gamzee laughs genuinely. "Girl, you crazy."

"Slander, I say! Now come on you dummy, I'm aiding and abetting a murderer and we need to hide the evidence. I say we cover the broken mirror with an enormous poster of Nic Cage and then blame it on Vriska."


End file.
